March 1926: Salem, Massachusetts

Hello, lovers of music, art, and literature. I’m Lizzie Crane, a jazz singer with The Troubadours from the Big Apple, visiting historic Salem, Massachusetts for the second time in three months. My bandmates and I only arrived yesterday and already trouble’s brewing.

Isaac Roman, a notorious and flamboyant art collector who’s absolutely rolling in dough, hired us to play for a spring equinox party at his mansion. It looked like an opportunity to make some serious moolah, meet some movers and shakers, and get together with a handsome Boston Brahmin with whom I’ve been making whoopee.

Everything was going swell, until a naked lady trotted into Roman’s ballroom on a horse during our performance last night. She swept up an artist named Sebastian and rode off with him. Her Lady Godiva act seemed amusing at the time––even though she stole some of our thunder––and we all thought it was one of Roman’s outrageous entertainment stunts. Until this morning when I discovered the artist’s body tied to a tree in our host’s solarium, stuck full of arrows like Botticelli’s painting of St. Sebastian.

Jeepers creepers! Another murder at yet another of our stints! This is the fourth body I’ve found in seven months––what are the odds? Are we jinxed? If this keeps up, The Troubadours will get a reputation as harbingers of death and people will stop hiring us, fearing a visit from the Grim Reaper.

But that’s not the worst of it. Turns out (much to my surprise) that the piano player in our band and my best friend, Sidney Somerset, knew the victim. In the biblical sense. They had a fling in New York eight years ago and Sid was looking forward to rendezvousing with Sebastian at this event. Now the cops suspect my friend of murdering the fella. Love gone wrong and all that.

Then there’s the naked horsewoman, who had an affair with the murdered man too and for some unknown reason has it in for me. And my illustrious host Roman? Rumors say he deals in art forgery and theft. How did I get myself into such a pickle in such a short span of time? If I’d known the road to fame and fortune had so many potholes, I might have been satisfied just singing for my supper in speakeasies around Greenwich Village.

But I can’t turn back time, and right now I’ve got to try to find the real killer and keep Sid out of the hoosegow. If I’m lucky, my new beau won’t abandon me as a bad-luck banshee. I keep reminding myself that on the darkest nights the stars shine brightest, and I’m making a wish that somehow this kerfuffle turns out okay.

Running in the Shadows, A Lizzie Crane Mystery Book 4
Genre: Historical Mystery (1920s)
Release: August 2024
Format: Digital, Print
Purchase Link

March 1926, Salem, Massachusetts

A spring equinox party at the mansion of a rich, flamboyant, and controversial art collector promises New York jazz singer Lizzie Crane and her band a fat paycheck, lucrative connections, and plenty of fun. She’ll also have an opportunity to reconnect with a handsome Boston Brahmin she fancies.

But the excitement she hopes for doesn’t turn out the way she expected. On the night of the musicians’ first performance, a naked young woman trots into the ballroom on horseback, sweeps up a talented artist named Sebastian, and rides off with him into the night. The next morning, Lizzie discovers the artist’s body tied to a tree, shot full of arrows like the martyred Saint Sebastian in Botticelli’s painting.

Soon Lizzie learns that her business partner, pianist Sidney Somerset, once had a close relationship with the dead man––and police suspect Sidney of murdering him. As she tries to protect her friend and discover the killer, Lizzie gets entangled in the treacherous underworld of art theft and forgery, a world where fantastic sums of money change hands and where lives are cheap.

About the author
Skye Alexander is the author of more than fifty fiction and nonfiction books, including three previous novels in the Lizzie Crane mystery series: Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife, What the Walls Know, and The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors. Her stories have been published in anthologies internationally and her work has been translated into fifteen languages. With fellow mystery writers Kate Flora and Susan Oleksiw, she cofounded Level Best Books in 2003. She’s also an artist, astrologer, tarot reader, and feng shui practitioner whose first career was doing interior and furniture design and architectural renovation in the Boston vicinity, including Salem, Massachusetts. She now make her home in Texas.